


does your skin ever melt into the mirror

by dixiehellcat



Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [7]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: BFFs, Brother Feels, Cameo Appearance by Goose the Cat, Gen, IM1 Revisited, Nick Fury is a Sneaky SOB, Skrull(s), imposter syndrome, military red tape
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:28:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,032
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24265114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dixiehellcat/pseuds/dixiehellcat
Summary: Tony’s joking reference to a past conversation leads him and Rhodey on an all too serious hunt for an imposter.Tony Stark Bingo, card 3028, fill S3 "On the Run", spring 2020
Relationships: James "Rhodey" Rhodes & Tony Stark
Series: Tony Stark Bingo 2020 [7]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1765129
Comments: 15
Kudos: 48
Collections: Tony Stark Bingo 2020





	does your skin ever melt into the mirror

**Author's Note:**

> Title from the poem Imposter Syndrome, by Madisen Kuhn. https://hellopoetry.com/poem/2541134/imposter-syndrome/
> 
> Time frame is somewhere between Iron Man 3 and Winter Soldier.

If James Rhodes lived to be a hundred, he reflected as he doffed War Machine, he would never lose the thrill of flying without a plane. He could live that long; after all, his grandmama had lived to ninety-three. If he died before his time, though, it would be without a doubt due to stress brought on by worrying about Tony Stark.

The aforementioned best friend-slash-bane of his existence stumbled out of the Iron Man suit with a giddy grin and a goose egg above one eye. “Another success,” he crowed and slapped Rhodey on the back. “Winning team, you and me. Quick trip to South America, saved some indigenous folks’ homes for them, kicked a greedy SOB in the ass, and could, _could_ , have gotten you a date with that hot foreign minister if you’d given me a chance to talk you up to her.”

Rhodey rolled his eyes and flopped onto the huge couch in the penthouse of Avengers Tower. “I don’t need you playing matchmaker for me, Tones. Rest assured, I still got game! What I do need is for you to not take so damn many unnecessary chances. You keep making my blood pressure go up, I won’t live long enough to get any play.”

Tony snorted as he brought two cold ones over. Putting one in Rhodey’s hand, he dropped to a seat beside him and took a swig of his own. “It’s your own fault, platypus. I never meant to use the suit, after all. Until you blew me off, I was just gonna be the brains behind the deal, and let you be the flyboy and grab the glory. At least you’ve lived long enough to regr—”

“Wait, what?” Rhodey frowned, his beer halfway to his mouth. “When exactly did I ‘blow you off’? And no perverted jokes, please.”

“Honeybear. I know you’re older than me, but not enough to start getting senile. I mean, I guess it didn’t mean much to you, but I remember it. That day at Edwards? I embarrassed you in front of a bunch of cadets with a comment that in retrospect was highly inappropriate.” Rhodey shook his head. “Couple of weeks after I got back from, uh, Afghanistan?”

“Tony, I wasn’t even in-country then. I got sent on a classified mission to Iran, the week after you came home, remember? Couldn’t tell anybody where I was going. They didn’t bring me back until you and Pepper blew up SI and Obadiah Stane—they basically said that was why they terminated the mission and transferred me back stateside in a rush, to be real about it…” Rhodey trailed off at Tony’s look of total confusion. “Okay, you know what, you’re probably right about the conversation, just not the time, or the place or whatever. Tell me more, refresh my geriatric memory, genius.”

His good-natured teasing always calmed Tony—always, but not this time. He looked even more distressed. “I, um…I went over to Edwards, to let you in on what I was working on, what became the Mark II Iron Man—which you ended up with anyway, nice circular formation there, huh? You were showing recruits around. I took you aside, told you I was working on something big and I wanted you to be a part of it. As soon as I said it wasn’t weaponry, you were done. You…” He swallowed, without taking another drink. “You called my press conference a stunt, said I needed to get my mind right, then you just said ‘it was nice to see you’ and—that was it.” He spread his hands with a little shrug.

Slowly, Rhodey set his beer bottle on the nearest stable surface and leaned forward till he was almost in Tony’s face. “How’re you feeling? I’m thinking that knock on the head you took when that big-ass rainforest tree fell on you may have rung your bell even through the suit, ‘cause I have no idea what you are talking about. I mean, I usually know what zip code you’re in, at least, but this—nope. We never had a conversation like that! How could you even imagine—”

“I didn’t imagine it! Contrary to what most people think, I can remember normal things.”

“Well, this isn’t normal. And it isn’t—Tony! I never said those things to you! Tell you to 'get your mind right', just weeks after you shot your way out of hell, with a machine in your chest keeping you alive??”

Instead of arguing, Tony shrugged again and looked away. “Fine, okay. If you don’t want to acknowledge it, I understand. We’ll say I imagined it, or dreamed it, whatever you want.” He clapped his hands and jumped up. “I’m starving. Wish we could’ve brought back some of that roast duck the locals were cooking, it smelled amazing. Since that’s off the menu, and Pep’s out of town, let’s call for some Thai, what’d ya say?”

Rhodey agreed, mostly for an excuse to stay and keep an eye on Tony. It wasn’t like him to invent incidents out of whole cloth; even back in college when he had drunk far more than any pint-sized underage genius should, he had always had an ironclad grasp on reality. Granted, recent events had shaken his world beyond what most people could bear, but despite what Rhodey suspected was a vigorous case of PTSD, Tony seemed to be bearing up and carrying on.

It worried Rhodey, though, and he silently resolved to figure out a way to ease at least this weird stressor. He couldn’t prove to Tony that the traumatic confrontation didn’t happen, but he could prove he wasn’t at Edwards at that time, which should close the matter. The simple fact that Rhodey had held Tony in his arms, from the desolate dunes where he had found him wandering, to the field hospital at Bagram, should have been sufficient to prove he could never say anything dismissive about the ordeal Tony had gone through. 

The next time he had a chance, he pulled his old LES’s from the period in question, but as he had thought, they only showed his pay, not his location. Next, he filled out a request for his records and emailed it in, only to find out his file for that deployment was sealed. “It’s my file!” he protested. “I’m Colonel Rhodes!” The Military Personnel Section was unimpressed. _Okay_ , he thought, _time for Plan B_. 

Rhodey hunted up his former commanding officer, Major-General Bill Gabriel, and paid him a visit. The man had recently retired, but he still had plenty of connections, and confessed he enjoyed following news of Rhodey’s exploits as War Machine. When over glasses of iced tea Rhodey casually brought up the mission to Iran, Gabriel visibly tightened. “That—it had more than a few moving parts, that thing did. Just before your reassignment order came up, I got a request from another department to embed an agent in our ranks for several weeks. I figured it was a quality assurance inspector, but when he showed up, he wasn’t just somebody to fill your slot while you were gone. He looked like you. I mean, enough that I checked with personnel to be sure you didn’t have a twin brother. It was unnerving enough, I took it up my chain of command, till my CO told me it was SHIELD business, and to lay off.”

That was all Rhodey needed to hear to start putting the pieces together. “It makes sense now,” he fumed, pacing around in Tony’s workshop at the tower. “When General Gabriel called me in to tell me about the new assignment, he made a point of saying you were gonna lay low, and they’d keep an eye on you. He’s the one who gave the auth for me to keep looking for you, so he knew I’d worry about that. In fact, he explicitly ordered me not to say anything to you, so you would rest. He also said my name was going to be put on the training duty roster, to cover my actual whereabouts, because it was a damn sensitive mission. I thought it was weird I didn’t do much of anything when I got over there, other than process basic intel that any O-1 fresh off Maxwell Airbase could have done. Why would SHIELD want me out of the way to put a ringer in my place, though?”

Tony was quiet, but his focused air said he was thinking. “They would have known I was Iron Man before anybody else,” he offered after a minute, with a rueful look. “I told you—well, him—while I was coming back from Gulmira. The next day he called to say he was shipping out to Tehran, he’d only be gone a couple of days, and for me not to ask for details. You—he—oh fuck it—you didn’t say that very often, so I figured it was Serious Business, and I left it alone.”

“I hadn’t seen you since I helped you off the C-130 from Afghanistan,” Rhodey almost whispered, his mind whiting out in shock. 

“The only other time he was around me for more than a couple of minutes was the night Pep called him, while she was with Coulson and his posse. She told him everything, about Obie setting me up, and sent him to the house, before I took off after Obie. He must’ve been steering clear otherwise, so I wouldn’t make him as a fake.”

“I got notified I was transferring back to the States early in the morning—Tehran’s nearly twelve hours ahead of LA, so about that same time. On the flight back the briefer told me what had gone on with ‘Iron Man’, that they knew it was you, that SHIELD was cooking you up a cover and I was needed to help with it. Naturally.” Rhodey cut his eyes at Tony, who grinned like a naughty kid in spite of the madness of the moment. “They didn’t want me to know they’d had a fraud running around with my face, so they wouldn’t have told me anything he did or said.” Rhodey clenched his fists, wishing the bastard who had impersonated him so badly and hurt Tony was here for him to punch. “I don’t know enough about SHIELD to know where to go from here though.”

“I do.” Tony’s voice was firm and cold. 

That was how Rhodey found himself in Washington DC, in his dress blues, being swept along in the wake of Tony Fucking Stark, Unstoppable Force of Nature, marching through the corridors of a huge governmental building he hadn’t even known existed, and ending up seated in the office of Nick Fury, director of SHIELD. It was an unnervingly normal-looking office, all things considered, with a coffeemaker and a pencil cup cut from a spent artillery shell, and weirdest of all, a soft cushion near the window on which an old ginger cat lay dozing.

“When you escaped from the Ten Rings, Mr. Stark,” Fury said, “SHIELD suspected you might have been…persuaded, to assist them in their terrorist endeavors. We pursued several avenues of inquiry that were inconclusive. One of the few people you seemed to trust was Colonel Rhodes, here, so I called in a personal favor and asked a friend to take his place for a while, to see if we could get a better read on your intentions.

“When fighter jets encountered Iron Man over Gulmira, it seemed at first to be more evidence you might be in league with, or coerced by, your assumed captors. The controller of the suit did look for all the world to be on the run, after all. However, when you rescued the pilot of the downed plane, at considerable risk to yourself, Agent Coulson and I began to think we had been barking up the wrong tree. Our associate contacted us at about that same time, with confirmation that you were actually in the Iron Man suit. With that intel in hand, we exfiltrated him and summoned Colonel Rhodes back from his overseas posting.” And, Rhodey reflected silently, he would never have known if not for a chance joke; as much as the faker’s words had hurt Tony, he had never thrown them in Rhodey’s face in the half dozen years since then, and probably never would have.

“So, who is this agent?” Rhodey was proud of himself, for not letting his voice quiver with the anger coursing through him.

“Now, you know I can’t tell you that.” Fury actually grinned, the bastard. “All I can say is they have, shall we say, out of this world abilities.” He leaned back in his chair and fixed his one eye on Tony. “I suppose you expect an apology of some sort.”

Rhodey opened his mouth, to say _Fuck yeah I do_ , but Tony’s quiet, bitter laugh stopped him. “You’re kidding, right, Mad-Eye? No. I don’t expect much of anything from you, let alone an _apology_.”

Fury blinked. “Then I suppose I should offer one, just out of spite, if nothing else. We misjudged you, several of us, at several points in time. I am not sorry for doing what I believed was necessary based on the data that I had, but I am sorry for that mistake.”

Rhodey was not having it. “With all due respect, director, that’s not good enough for me. You used my name, my face, apparently, somehow, and you played on a friendship that went back decades, for your own purposes. That’s something I’m not sure I can forgive.”

“Nor should you.” Fury surprised him by replying, his face sober. “In my position, I’ve had to do quite a few things that most people would call unforgivable. That’s on me, though, little brother. It’s not on you.”

“I’m not your brother.” Rhodey was ready to wind up, but Tony forestalled him again. 

“C’mon platypus, lets blow this popsicle stand and leave Dangermouse to herd his Pinfolds.” He was tired of this mess, Rhodey could see it in his face and hear it in his voice, ready to lay it to rest and move on. As badly as Rhodey wanted to rip the man a new asshole, in the balance, it’d probably hurt Tony more to have to listen to that. Maybe later, but not now.

_  
_

_After Stark and Rhodes left, Nick Fury sat for a few moments in his office, quiet. By the window, Goose huffed and rolled over. Fury scooped her up, cushion and all, and carried her into the small conference room adjoining. He settled her, checked her water bowl, and closed the door behind him as he went back toward his desk, thumbing his intercom. “Send Agent Terrence in.”_

_A few moments later, a man entered. His appearance, clothing and demeanor were all as nondescript as it was possible to be. “At ease,” Fury said and nodded. The man relaxed and—became something else. His neat suit dissolved into trousers tucked into boots and a long-tailed leathery violet coat; his height increased, his hair vanished, his skin turned green. Ears elongated into points, and his eyes turned deep crimson. “Have a seat, T’ranss.” Fury gestured toward the chair James Rhodes had just vacated. “We have fucked up, my Skrull friend. I hope I have tamped down the fire, but it’s open to doubt.”_

_  
_

Rhodey was still seething as Tony wheeled the rented Audi out of the parking lot of SHIELD headquarters. “You know I’m almost as pissed at you as I am at them,” he said. “You really thought I’d ever act that way toward you?”

As usual, once again, Tony shrugged it off. “Everybody thought I’d lost my marbles, so it wasn’t surprising if you did too.”

“Hell no. You should’ve known better.” Rhodey turned away in a mood, and glared out the car window at the Potomac. “Can’t even tell the diff between your best friend and—who? What? Out of this world, he said. You said one time that Fury chooses his words like a jeweler picking over diamonds, so, what, he found a shape-shifting alien or something?”

Tony laughed. “From now on, sour patch, whenever you insult me I’ll be sure to check your back for a zipper. Now, since we’re in DC, how about we hit Old Ebbits for some liquid refreshment—”

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Rhodey wasn't letting him avoid this time. “I don’t mean about that conversation, if you thought that was me, but…you never told me I was being the kind of friend you would expect to treat you like that. I would’ve changed, if I’d known—"

“What? Rhodey, no. You’re the best friend I’ve ever had, the best anybody could have. It wasn’t about you. I was trying to figure out who I was, then, really, you know? After—after Afghanistan. I wanted to build this suit, and let you fly it, but you—well, that guy, who by the way, wasn’t nearly as attractive as you, he was kind of puffy, I thought about pointing that out and asking if you were retaining water, but obviously it was a bad time…” Rhodey just looked across the front seat at him, and he ran out of steam, and let out a sigh. “Okay. Hearing you trying to shove me back into that box—yeah, it hurt, but then it made me angry, made me want to push back. It would’ve been easier not to, as far as what everybody else was expecting, sure. But…the guy who came out of that cave wasn’t the guy who went in, and I felt like I had to prove to myself that I was him. So it was—it made me become Iron Man.”

“Hmph. Not that I’m thrilled about that, exactly. Iron Man, I mean. But you being you, Tones? Being the person you wanted to be? Hell yeah. That I’m glad for.” The grin Tony shot his way now was real. “So now that the sensitivity portion of the program is wrapped up, off to the old bar for some old whiskey?”

**Author's Note:**

> Yay, my bingo! Shout out to the Trouser Snake Guardians, wherein this story idea sprouted from a conversation about what we would change about IM1 if we could. My choice was Rhodey's dismissive attitude toward Tony in their exchange in the hangar, and somebody's flippant suggestion became this little tale.
> 
> Few notes on how this works re MCU canon—the tie-in comic Fast Friends has Coulson bringing Tony and Rhodey to a SHIELD base, offering to train Tony to fight (with Rhodey's help), and telling him they would create an alibi that he wasn’t even in the US. Thing is, in the closing scene of IM1, Tony looks at the note cards with the alibi like he had no idea they were coming. So in the verse of this story, that didn’t happen.
> 
> Also, the MCU wiki timeline says a week passed between the night of the gala, which ended with Tony's attack on the Ten Rings in Gulmira, and him sending Pepper to get the sales documentation from SI. Somehow I just don’t see him, as urgent as he clearly feels it is when he and Pepper argue about his actions, pissing away a week. Pep comes down to the workshop and finds Jarvis and the bots getting Tony out of the mark 3, but does she ever leave, or does he fix it then, they talk, and she goes out on her own mission right then? My Wordsmith verse plots it that way, and this story does too.
> 
> Rhodey uses some military jargon in the story. LES=leave and earnings statement, basically a military paycheck stub. Maxwell Air Force Base is where intelligence officers are trained, and the rank Rhodey refers to would be brand new and low ranking. In other words, he was sent on a mission that his skill level was not needed on, in order for Fury to slip his Skrull buddy in.


End file.
